MARKING OUT THE ATLANTIC.

Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 37, 14 February 1885, Page 1 (Supplement)

MARKING OUT THE ATLANTIC.

In England a novel sort of seagoing structure is being constructed in the shipbuilding yards — a floating lighthouse, with which it intended to mark out the best route from England to the United States. These lighthouses are like enormous bottles or huge buoys. The interior is separated into rooms, and a ladder leads to the small tower for the lighting arrangements. Each light is destined for a point on the route whose latitude and longitude are accurately determined, It is to be towed on its side to the spot, then water ballast will be admitted to a special basal chamber, which will cause the bottle-shaped house to rise up and ride on the waters like a bottle, and then it will be attached by a chain to a mass of sunken cast-

iron. The lighthouses aro intended to be not merely lamps on the road from England to America, but also telegraphic stations in connection with tho Atlantic cable ; so that ships will be reported daily at their destination and port of departure. Weather telograms will bo sent as often as necessary to both ends of tho cable, thus supplying an abundanco of material on which to found weather forecasts. If a ship sailing along tho lighthouse track is lost, tho date of its disappearance will bo known to a day, and tho sort of woathor prevailing at tho spot at tho time will also be known. It will bo no easy matter to man these terribly isolated abodes in mid-ocoan. Tho lighthouse-keepers will require to be frequently changed, or Atlantic lighthouse-keeping will have to be added to the list of modem causes of lunacy. — Sydney Morning Horald.